Librairie

Rechercher

Accueil / Romance / Marked By My Best Friend's Dad / Chapitre 71 - Chapitre 80

Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 71 - Chapitre 80

105

071

~ AliceTwo Weeks LaterTwo weeks is not a long time.It’s fourteen days.Three hundred and thirty-six hours.Just enough time for the world to pretend nothing dramatic ever happened.And somehow… that’s exactly what it did.Prom photos were still circulating. People were already talking about midterms. Life moved forward like my heart hadn’t been cracked open in a hallway under fairy lights.Iris and IWe were “fine.”That’s the word everyone used.Fine.We texted.We studied together.We laughed sometimes.And at night… she still came over.Best friends cuddle.That’s what we called it.The first time it happened after the breakup, I thought it was a mistake. She knocked on my door around midnight, hair messy, hoodie too big for her frame.“Can I stay?” she asked.I didn’t even hesitate.She lay beside me like she always had. One arm around my waist. My back against her chest. Breathing steady.Nothing inappropriate.Nothing romantic.Just warmth.It should have felt safe.Instead,

072

~IrisI miss Ky.I didn’t mean to think it so bluntly. I didn’t mean for it to hit me the moment I woke up, or when I passed the coffee shop where she used to steal the first sip from my cup, or when my phone stayed stubbornly quiet for hours.But I missed her.The night before she left keeps replaying in my head.We didn’t do anything reckless.We didn’t promise forever.We just… existed.She had come over late. The room was dim, the only light coming from the lamp beside my bed. I remember how she stood there for a second, just looking at me like she was memorizing something.“Don’t look at me like that,” I told her.“Like what?”“Like you’re about to miss me.”She smiled softly. “I am.”We lay on my bed facing each other, knees brushing, hands intertwined between us. No chaos. No rivalry. No hallway confrontations. Just quiet.She trace

073

~ Iris POVI didn’t sleep that night.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it again, the council chamber, the map on the table, the way Eunice said silver weapons like she was talking about flowers.The ambush was perfect.Too perfect.The ravine bend. The timing of the full moon run. The witnesses who would swear it was a fair challenge gone wrong. Even Cassian’s role,clean, deniable, wrapped in pack law.And then the part that made my chest cave in completely.Alice.“They’ll remove the heir too,” Eunice had said casually. Like it was a loose end to be snipped, not a person. Not the girl who loved me. Not the girl who still believed in me.If Duncan died…If Alice died…The pack would burn. Civil war. Rogue factions. Crimson Ridge sweeping in to “restore order.”I couldn’t let that happen.But I also couldn’t go to Duncan.Not without exposing every

074

~ Iris POV I told myself I was strong. I told myself this was temporary. I told myself it was worth it. Lies, stacked on top of each other, just to keep breathing. Eunice kept her word. The ambush was postponed. Not canceled,never canceled,but pushed back, dates shifted, plans blurred just enough to buy time. Time I clung to like a lifeline. But the cost was me. Everything about it was cold. Calculated. There was no affection, no illusion of intimacy. Eunice treated me like a possession she had finally claimed after years of wanting. She spoke to me like I was beneath her, like this was my punishment for daring to exist where she couldn’t control me. I learned how to disappear inside myself. I learned how to keep my face still, my voice quiet, my thoughts far away. I learned how to endure. Afterward, she would sit back, satisfied, triumphant, as if every moment proved something to herself she’d been desperate to believe. “You should be grateful,” she once said,

075

Sorry, the previous chapter is chapter 074.~ Iris POVNight swallowed the estate whole by the time Duncan took me to his study.The door shut behind us with a soft click that sounded final, like there was no going back after this. The fire was low, shadows crawling along the walls, the room smelling like leather, ink, and Alpha power.I stood there, hands shaking.Duncan didn’t rush me. He didn’t sit. He just leaned against the desk, arms crossed, eyes burning,not with anger yet, but with restraint so tight it scared me more.“Talk,” he said quietly.And something inside me broke.I was going to tell him the whole truth, I was tired of lying. The words poured out of me like blood from an open wound. I told him everything,how I’d always known myself as a lesbian, how loving Alice had felt right, safe, simple. How I’d built my whole identity around that certainty.“And then you happened,” I whispered, voice cracking. “And nothing made sense anymore.”I told him about the bond. How it

076

~ Iris POVMorning came slow and heavy, like the estate itself was bracing for something.I didn’t see Eunice taken. I didn’t hear shouting. But the sound of boots, sharp and certain, echoed down the marble corridors. Heavy doors clicked closed. Voices carried authority. Command. Not anger. Not chaos. Just control.By midday, the word spread quietly, almost whispered: Eunice had been confined. West wing. Locked. Under constant guard. No visitors. No communication. Room arrest. Until Duncan decided her fate.I should have felt relief.I didn’t.Relief would have meant trust. I didn’t trust the calm. The estate felt… tense, like a held breath that could shatter at any moment. Duncan’s eyes were sharp, focused, unreadable. No trace of satisfaction crossed his features. He didn’t speak of her again that morning. He turned straight to war.Maps were unrolled. Patrol routes recalculated. Warriors summoned quietly, names crossed, priorities reassigned. Thorne moved like a shadow, deliverin

077

~ Iris POVIt had been weeks since I moved into Duncan’s estate. Weeks of constant quiet, of shadowed hallways, of the weight of everything we had survived pressing against me at every turn. The house itself seemed aware, as if it knew the danger had passed, yet nothing had been resolved. The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was anticipatory, like the air had been thickened with tension, waiting for the next disaster.I wandered the halls, trying to adjust, trying to blend into the rhythm of the place, but it was impossible. Duncan moved like a storm contained, deliberate and controlled. Every decision he made, every command he whispered to his guards, every map he spread out across the study table, reminded me that the world we were living in had no mercy. Not for mistakes. Not for hesitation. And certainly, not for me.Alice had been avoiding me. I didn’t expect forgiveness, not yet, not after what she had seen. But her avoidance was sharper than I imagined possible. She didn’t speak. Sh

078

~ Alice POVBetrayal doesn’t feel the way people describe it.It isn’t always loud. It isn’t always fire and screaming and shattered glass.Sometimes it’s quiet.Sometimes it feels like standing in the middle of a familiar room and realizing the walls have shifted an inch to the left… and you don’t know when it happened.That was how it felt with Iris.Weeks had passed since she moved into my father’s estate. My mother’s estate. The corridors she walked now were the same ones my mother used to glide through with laughter in her voice and warmth in her hands. And every time I saw Iris there, standing where my mother once stood, something inside me tightened.She looked comfortable.Too comfortable.I didn’t speak to her. I didn’t trust myself to. Because if I did, I might say something unforgivable.Or worse…I might ask her why.Why she was sucking my dad dick like it was normal in the study ?Why she looked at him the way she used to look at me.Why she didn’t fight for me when every

079

~ Duncan POVThere are two kinds of war.The kind fought with claws and steel.And the kind fought in silence, inside your own blood.I had survived the first.The second was destroying me.Marianne had died in this house.In our bedroom.In my arms.I remember the way her breathing had thinned out over months. The way her inhaler stopped working as effectively. The way the physicians insisted it was worsening asthma. Genetic. Unfortunate.I believed them.I believed my sister.Eunice had handled the medications when I was away managing borders. She’d insisted on helping. Said Marianne trusted her.I trusted her too.She was my little sister.I never questioned her.That was my failure.When Iris came to me three nights ago with documents in her hands and fury in her eyes, I almost dismissed her.Almost.“Don’t do this,” I had warned her.She didn’t back down.“She was murdered.”The words had struck like a blade between ribs.I wanted to throw her out of my office.I didn't like any

080

~ Alice POVI had never hated silence before.Now it stalked. Too orderly. Too composed. As if the walls themselves were pretending nothing had rotted inside them for years.My aunt was gone.My father had buried himself in Alpha duties.Iris moved through the halls like a ghost.And I….I was unraveling.I told myself I hated them all.My dad. Iris. My aunt.It was easier that way.Easier to let anger burn than let grief swallow me whole.But the worst part wasn’t my father.Well, part of it It wasn’t Eunice.It wasn’t even the humiliation of that day in the council chamber.It was the ache.That stubborn, traitorous ache in my chest that refused to die.Because i still loved Iris.And that made me furious with myself.I avoided her.Ignored her presence at meals.

Dernier

...

Suivant

Scanner le code pour lire sur l'application

DMCA.com Protection Status